#21

I discovered that quadra can actually make remarkably clean subharmonic divisions! I had a square from one of my mangroves multed to the trigger in and patched two quadra outs to a crossfader, fading between the original mangrove signal and the quadra‘s using my doepfer theremin. Couple that with a doepfer ribbon controller‘s pressure increasing audio rate modulation of air and a foot controller controlling the mangrove‘s formant and it starts to feel as if you were in control of a three piece brass band.

10 Likes
#22

I would love to hear an example of this. Capturing the spirit of horns in synths is one of favorite sounds.

#23

Update on this clock speed idea:

map control of both the coefficient and harmonic multiplier to the ~same fader/knob/whatever. Extremely clean and versatile clock divisions. This also helps with a chronic issue I encounter: limiting control over a piece so that each piece retains an identity (analogous to actually picking a scale instead of just always playing chromatically – making decisions is always a good idea, particularly in such a limitless world). The discontinuities in the linear speed increase actually decrease as a ratio to the overall speed as one slows down, so there’s lots of variability in flavor overall, and a gradual slide down has a dramatic drop at first (in my case a 4:5 ratio), and those drops get less dramatic as the fader moves. Lots of options, one fader, plenty of ‘blind spots’ that are just jumped over, so that slightly different ‘seed’ values give one very different ranges of control. As far as I’m concerned, this is what a clock ~is~ now.

2 Likes
#24

I’d love to learn more about this clock idea, I’ve read both your posts but I’d appreciate a more explanatory post as I’m having a hard time getting how I can patch this up and try it myself! Sounds interesting to say the least so thanks for sharing your discoveries.

4 Likes
#25

not super music related but after lusting after that Logictech Keyboard With A Knob that’s like 200 dollars i realized i have all of the pieces already to get the monome arc controlling scrubbing, scrolling, zooming in final cut pro!

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had been planning to try to get something working like this for awhile but don’t quite have the knowhow. there’s a fairy popular third party scripting app for FCP called command post (written in lua, which i learned through here!) but i have never had time to dig into how to make the arc talk to the app. but i realized today that they already have midi support implemented and the gears began grinding in my head. using the returns max patch to convert the arc to midi and command post to convert the midi into actions. for such a stupid work around, surprisingly it is totally usable like this. maybe even more convenient?? remains to be seen if i can retrain my muscle memory to stop mashing cmd+/-, but great to find a use for some of the music things i had to put away to make room for working remotely.

10 Likes
#26

One benefit of working for a company that keeps sensitive records is that we have a file room with large metal shelves with metal dividers and metal cranks to move the shelves around.

One benefit of the 21st century is that this file room is pretty much empty (except for a small stash of office supplies on one shelf) as all those sensitive documents were digitized years ago.

One benefit of the pandemic is that everyone is working from home and the office is empty - you can bang on things and generally be a nuisance without bothering anyone else.

I had to go in to do take care of some things in-person earlier this week and spent some time banging and crashing the filing shelves together and recording the resulting noises. It just dawned on me that there are probably a lot of great places to capture some field recordings that would normally be impractical.

EDIT: In the spirit of sharing… (sorry for crappy recording quality, recorded with an iPhone)

Some short clangs in the beginning, some nice ringing/reverberating at the 20s mark. Also, you get the freebie of the building ventilation (or maybe its manufactured noise for privacy?) at the end.

21 Likes
#27

Setting up the txo for use as envelope gives algorithmic control over level of envelope + attack time + decay time. Might come in handy…

3 Likes
#28

Somehow this little thing is something that I have to keep on re-discovering rather than just having in my tool belt, but: modulating the modulation is one of the best ways to create structure and expressivity in a patch. My tendency is to do that by just turning things on and off, when there’s a lot more nuance to be found by patching as much CV as possible through attenuators to be played by hand or controlled with yet more CV. Also fun: having many or all of the attenuators controlled by a single multed offset!

18 Likes
#29

Big motivation behind the design of the Mannequins Cold Mac “Survey” knob. More complex than attenuation if you want it, but it can do attenuation too.

5 Likes
#30

Have you seen the ADDAC System 306 VC Transitions yet?

5 Likes
#31

Wow that one was not on my radar, thanks for sharing! I had been thinking about an Emblematic Catalyst, and I would prefer a fader to a slider, but I also don’t really care for button combos or need 8 banks of 8 scenes… Hmm!

2 Likes
#32

The 306 is as simple as it gets. Plus you can easily flip the direction of each track which is more playable than you can imagine. It was designed with performance and simplicity in mind.
Disclaimer : I co-designed this with ADDAC. Take my opinion with a grain of salt.

6 Likes
#33

So, I’m new to patching with banana cables, but I had a moment of discovery last night that was perspective-altering. And I’m not sure I have the right language to summarize succinctly so I will explain in some detail.

I’m patching an easel command LPG “module”. It has two level CV inputs. I’m patching such that the envelope from the EG and the pulse output (just a gate) both open the LPG.

Easy enough. For LPG input 1: the EG & pulse out both going to the LPG 1 input via stacking on the LPG 1 input.

And I would have expected to have to do the same for LPG 2. I started by patching the same EG out I was using for LPG 1 to the input on LPG 2. However, I noticed that the pulse was already present on LPG 2, even though the pulse output isn’t directly patched to the LPG 2 input.

Maybe this is how stackable in euroland work too? I never used them so I don’t know.

Attaching a photo because rereading the above sounds confusing as hell :sweat_smile:

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(EG out is orange; pulse out is yellow; gate in is black.)

A happy discovery that will change the way I think about patching a bit.

3 Likes
#34

You’re passively mixing your signals. I presume that’s safe in Buchla? Consistent output impedances and buffered inputs will yield the average of your passively mixed outputs.

2 Likes
#35

You put it that way and I sound like a dummy! :wink:

But you’re right of course about what’s happening, and I don’t know why it felt so… weird?

I think it must just be that years worth of experience relying on a dedicated module to do this, and the face that I had to be intentional in a different way than simply using cables?

Not sure, but good to have these moments and reflect on habits, I think.

#36

Sorry, I have a bad habit of stating things as if they’re obvious :sweat:

Bananas look like they promote such a open workflow! Some days I’m tempted to sell all my euro and go Serge…

Today my small discovery was: you can use an ER-301 Counter unit set to 1 step as a flip flop! I’m using the ADDAC Manual Gates as arm/record for a set of loopers, where you can flip between A part and B part loops.

3 Likes
#37

I posted this in the Make Noise thread, and don’t mean to be spammy but thought some people following this thread could find some ideas in my discovery useful.

My discovery last night was in using the CV out from Morphagene into the Zone input on Mimeophon, with both skew and ping-pong modes activated. Mimeophon is clocked to the master clock from Tempi, and Morphagene clocked to the gate out on Mimeophon. This creates some really interesting rhythmic movement for percussive sounds - which was in this case a self-modulated Sisters running through an LxD for a surprisingly realistic drum sound. This was triggered from a straight division of the master clock but with the delay creates a complex rhythm that sounds quite similar to a drum circle/tribal drums, with rolls as it moves into smaller zones, and really interesting overlaps in higher zones.

Sounds like this (jump to about 5:30 for the effect I’m talking about):

I’m really excited to explore this idea some more!

13 Likes
#38

I made one of those multitrack cassettes where each track is one long tone, the length of the cassette, which transforms the deck into a sort of fixed oscillator bank that can be played with mute/group switches and/or faders.

I learned that this is a whole lot easier if you make the tones longer than you think you need from the get-go. Not unrelatedly, I also learned a ton about making relatively seamless splices digitally in Logic Pro.

9 Likes
#39

Also fascinated by the idea of macro control over multiple modulation sources. Catalyst and VC Transitions modules look great as the others mentioned.

Future Sound Systems Makrow caught my attention as well—one knob that attenuates 6 independently dialed offset voltages.

1 Like
#40

You might be already familiar with this video, but your idea reminded me of it:


Basically Tascam 4 track used as drone machine where separate tracks are different voices which then you can EQ, send to effects etc.
I once used similar approach inside Ableton where each track had same synthesizer playing constant drone over different chords and then when playing live I would play with different volumes of separate tracks.
2 Likes